Free Republic

Mel Tolkin, the long-suffering head of Sid Caesar’s celebrated television writing team, who was present from the cramped, sweaty, malodorous beginning, died yesterday at his home in Century City, Calif. He was 94... As the lead writer for “Your Show of Shows” and its successor, “Caesar’s Hour,” Mr. Tolkin presided over a team that at one time or another included Mel Brooks, Lucille Kallen, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen. “Your Show of Shows,” starring Mr. Caesar and Imogene Coca, was broadcast on NBC from 1950 to 1954. A wellspring of American television comedy, the show endures to this...

Howard Morris, who died Saturday at 85, was an actor and voiceover artist who became a familiar figure to television viewers of the early 1950s as one of the regulars on "Your Show of Shows," the Sid Caesar variety series that launched some of the biggest names in American comedy. While his face was less known to later generations, Morris's voice popped up all over the airwaves. He could be heard in cartoons, as Fred Flintstone's boss, Mr. Slate, and as Jughead Jones in various televised versions of the "Archie" comic strip, as well as the title character in the...